I just thought I'd ramble a little bit about what I've been up to lately... which is to say, not a whole hell of a lot.

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I've quit playing Everquest again. I suppose I'm a bit more serious about it this time. I gave away one of my accounts and consolidated the other two to the tune of $125. I decided I wanted to quit before I burned out again. It's nice to leave on a high note.

About the character transfer fee I mention above: All I have to say is, damn. Smart move, sony. They made it a little cheaper than maintaining the second account for a year. Just cheap enough, in fact, to be worth doing... but no cheaper. In the end I'm not sure it was worth it but I couldn't bear the thought of just throwing away three years of gaming. Ah well.

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In other news, I've been rereading Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series in preparation for the release of the next book. I love the series... it's some of the best escapist fantasy that's been written in a long time. It does frustrate me, however, that due to the volume of the series (6000ish pages?) I can't keep track of everything that's happened so I have to reread often. Ah well. Worse things have happened, I suppose.

Interestingly, I find it harder these days to devote time to reading escapist fiction. I suppose my tastes are just changing. I read a lot more non-fiction now.

A comment on Jordan and the wheel of time: I do know that it's just formula fantasy. I'm comfortable with that. It's well-written and the story is interesting. I enjoy Jordan's detail fetishism.

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Japanese has been going fairly well. So well, in fact, that I've been buying supplemental books about it. The language actually seems fairly simple from my newbie perspective. I think the hardest thing so far for me, as an english speaker, is that it is very very context-sensitive. More so by far than English. Sentence structure seems remarkably fluid. We'll see as I learn more.

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Work is going. I can't complain but I can't say anything good about it. It pays the bills.

I fear that I am more defined by my work than I am comfortable with. I guess that's natural since the bulk of my waking hours are devoted to it. I will say this, though: I want to find something more rewarding and interesting to do with my freetime.

I think it would be good to take up a martial art of some kind. Probably tai chi. I just havent had the balls to commit to it yet. I have too many things that I want to do and I'm being lazy and not doing them. At least taking Japanese was a step in the right direction.